My thoughts were that students would just come up with ideas, kind of to get the imagination going and get them interested in space.

As for the actual atheletes, I think for the next many years it's going to be somewhat like the X Games have been. Snowboarding, blading, etc. are all sports driven by the individuals who have the wherewithall to "Just Do It" (sorry, Nike). I don't see "official", or "sanctioned" events for decades, let alone some kind of school sponsored extra-curricular (sp?) activity.

But even if it's something just for the few extremists for the forseable future, what a blast! How absolutely wonderful to get kids even thinking about the possibilities!

Yeah, the contest is just a way to get kids interested in the physics behind something that they already enjoy. They've tried it with normal sports, but kids like to figure things like that out for themselves. Take away the gravity and the kids have to go back to their teachers and ask questions.

Also, I can definitely imagine the nightmare, from the standpoint of the teacher and the student. My mom teaches and dreads her yearly trip to St. Augustine. And I take a trip every year to Ohio for Internationals and I get sick of the people that I'm with after a few days... nevermind being stuck in space with them for that long

Liability? I am quite certain that there would be a waiver involved and that will be the case until commercial space travel/tourism reaches its 40th or 50th birthday...

As for health, it comes down to:

1). Surviving 4-6 times the earths gravitation for 60-90 seconds
2). Not getting seriously ill (i.e. requiring a doctor) while you are on the trip

... John Glenn was and octegenarian (I think) when he took his shuttle ride; John Young is allegedly still on the active astronaut roster at 73 or something like that (It's good to be the boss over there, I guess), and Mike Melvill is in his 60's

Children are probably better suited to survive the rigors of space travel than adults are, having generally leaner body mass and a better skeletal cartilage content.

I don't think any serious court would consider a lawsuit from somebody who willingly signed a paper and boarded a spacecraft, but I doubt any anti-spacefaring parent would let thier kid do so anyway... especially if it was gonna cost somebody (be it the state or the parents) 30K or more.

The Canadian Arrow team had at one point announced their intention to send a teenager (16 or 17 year old?) so presumably somebody has already at least theorized about it.

I definitely agree that it's doable for individual youngsters, but there's still a liability risk involved. What I think is out of the question (for many, many, many years) is some kind of K12 sponsored extra-carricular type situation.

To turn back to Same-Day-Package-Delivery I have in mind special tiings. There are Packages that have to be delivered as quickly as possible because of their contents - it might have a very short lifecycle or it might be needed quite quickly. The concrte example I'm thinking about is medicine - especially a kind of medicine there is lack of in a very distant region ruled by an epidemie. There neede lots of this medicine and its lifecycle may be less than two days.

Another (possibly more realistic) example is in the case of factories which require replacement parts. From what I've heard, there are cases in which a critical piece of machinery breaks down, and while that piece is broken, the factory loses hundreds of thousands of dollars an hour. In such cases a company will charter a special courier plane at great expense to deliver a replacement part, with little regard to cost; the delivery cost is trivial compared to the amount of money they're losing. If a suborbital transport can (reliably) get it there in a few hours less time, I'm sure they'd be happy to pay for it.

that could be, but there are some other emerging technologies that could make that kind of courier service obsolete, namely sintering and pro-metal type things (not sure what the technical term for the latter is). as those advance, they'll also be of great use in space, especially in colonies. instead of having to have a part sent from earth when it breaks, you can just put the file into your rapid prototyping or pro-metal machine and sinter or "print" it out in hours instead of waiting for weeks for it to get there from earth.

Just this moment I remember another "problem" suborbital spacecrafts perhaps provide a solution for. May be that it would not increase the general interest but might cause good public relations.

There are places on our planet risky to reach for aeroplanes - because of very high or close mountains for example. "Suborbital" spacecrafts that are landing vertical as well as launching vertical might provide a better solution to reach those places than aeroplanes.

Airporst are allready at those places - they only need to be provided equipment a spaceport is requiring.

Just this moment I remember another "problem" suborbital spacecrafts perhaps provide a solution for...

I think the more applicable and useful point here is to resolve the issues around overcrowded airports. With planes only being able to land one at a time, vtol commercial (possibly suborbital) planes make a lot of sense.

In terms of the Everest idea, I don't think it will ever happen (the environmentalists wouldn't be happy). It also undermines the achievement of climbing the mountain, both for today's climbers and for Sir Edmund Hillary and the other early pioneers.

There seems to be very little noise about suborbital being used for mass transit. I guess because there's not a lot of cash in the industry at the moment, and firms are focussing on stabilising their core businesses. Not necessarily differentiating themselves through risky projects.

I dont see the point of rocket travel for our globe. Sure, for going to New York to China and back, it would be nice to get there very fast, but for general purposes, its like going shopping at your local market in a formula 1 car i think.
It will only be good for the very few who are constantly flying long distances, and you cannot support a whole market around that. You can do goods with that, but like on the road, even when trucks are in a traffic jam, they are much cheaper then anything else. Same goes for rocket ships. It's to imature to be used for this kind of transport.

The concorde was a specific-market aeroplane, and it didnt had that of a great impact on the market, apart from status achievements. If people had to choose between fast and comfort, after some they, they'll all choose comfort, and you cannot get comfort in a suborbital spaceship for the time being.

I think it's a better idea just to stick with space with rocketships, to get a regular supply to space with the help of the next generation private funded spaceships.

it's depending of what will developed out of the current suborbital spacecrafts in the nearby future I think. Look at Burt Rutan's statements. He has been speaking of at least two different courses of development - the first leading to more passenger capacity, the second to orbital capacity. A third Rutan didn't speak of yet is freight capacity - and freight can be and should be considered very detailed. It will be the markets who will determine developments and evolutions. Suborbital tourism will trun industrial attention to suborbital spacecrafts - and then the industrial enterprises will remark what use to make by them we here at the forum never could detect.

When I posted my proposal yesterday I incidentally thought of the fact that some international airports in the past really have been considered very risky and dangerous because of their natural surroundings. Before the beginning of war in Afghanistan 1979 (?) the airports there were considered to be a problem because of the mountains. The airport in Nepal is such a problem too I suppose. Another example are the airports of Quito/Ecuador and La Paz/Bolivia. Additionaly vertical landing and launching vehicles are advantageous where no aeroplane can land but rescue of humans is needed - huge deserts for example. Polar regions? Oceans?